Mud Pies And Vintage Bed Springs

by Joy Mathis Chadwick

Sometimes when Benny the Amazing Wonder Boy (BTAWB) and I are just chillin’ on the back porch, I’ll tell him about when I used to be a little girl, even though he doesn’t quite get that concept just yet. It’s okay, BTAWB, sometimes it’s hard for me to understand, too; childhood was a very l-o-n-g time ago.

Life sure had its challenges for a kid with no brothers or sisters, especially since there were no neighborhood kids to play with. So I had to be pretty creative. If I concentrate really hard, I can almost hear the back screen door slam as my momma would step out on the porch and holler at the top of her lungs, “Joy Lynn, you get back to this house RIGHT NOW.” (In the south, there is a distinct difference between yelling and hollering. If you were a kid, you were hollered at; if you were a mouthy teenager, you were yelled at. I was well versed in all aspects of hearing my name called by my momma.) And why was my momma hollering at me? I was probably off somewhere being creative.

Do kids even make mud pies anymore? Somehow I suspect not, at least not on the scale that country kids of the 50s and 60s did; there just weren’t a lot of options for outdoor play for little girls, especially those who didn’t necessarily like playing indoors with dolls. (Don’t get me wrong; I loved my doll, but playing indoors was reserved for those rare days in south Arkansas when it was too cold or rainy to play outside.) My playhouse rivaled any of the Pinterest designer models these days. It usually consisted of a large cardboard box, some of my momma’s castoff bowls or pots and pans, and maybe a spoon secretly borrowed from the kitchen drawer. (Did I just hear my momma holler at me about a missing spoon?) The cardboard box turned upside down was a top-of-the-line baker’s stove; unfortunately, weather would always take its toll on my stove and I was always on a never-ending search for the perfect stove for my playhouse under the big shade tree in the backyard. I was pretty particular about the quality of the mud; it had to be free of sticks or rocks or bugs; it had to have just the right consistency when mixed with pond water. A country kid had her standards too, you know. If I had managed to avoid being hollered at (a sign of misbehavior on my part), my momma might let me have just a little bit of flour to mix in with my mud. Somehow this elevated the bar for mud pies. No mud pie from my kitchen was complete until it was decorated using pretty leaves and blooms from my momma’s flower bed. After the pie was baked in the hot summer sun for a couple of days, it was then ready for a blue ribbon entry in my pretend county fair. All these criteria for the perfect mud pie were self imposed; even as a child I wanted to excel at creativity.

Somehow I evaded near-death experiences a few times, and these experiences were almost always a result of a creative, yet not-logically-thinking mind of a country kid. I remember wanting to be a pirate and had a perfect plan that involved a set of old bed springs. (Sorry, but you’ll just have to look this up on Pinterest. I’ll just say that bedding has come a long, l-o-n-g way in the last 60 years.) I was confident that I could jump from the limb of the tree in the backyard onto those old bed springs to pull off a pretty impressive swashbuckling pirate maneuver. Yes, my momma hollered at me about the time that I misjudged the trajectory of a projectile kid coming from a not-so-low-hanging limb. I limped back to the house, vowing never to be a pirate again. My creative self had gotten me into trouble.

We were poor, very poor by most people’s standards, but I don’t think I realized we were poor until the reality of peer pressure reared its ugly head. My parents went out of their way to make sure that my childhood was nothing short of amazing; and it was so amazing because it did not involve one dime’s worth of store-bought fun. I hope I can pass along even just a tiny spark of creative curiosity to BTAWB ….. oh but wait …… this could get me (and him) into big trouble!

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I love reading about the account of God’s creativity in the Book of Genesis, but I have so very many thoughts and questions, creative questions about The Creation:

How long did God think about Creation before He brought it into being? Did He plan it out in great detail, or does God even need to plan? I think He must do a lot of planning, because He says, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11) Isn’t it awesome to know that God was planning for US while He was creating the world! He already knew that He wanted us to prosper; He already knew that He didn’t want us to come to any harm; He already knew that He would give us hope; He already knew that He would give us a future! Wow!

I love that Adam and Eve didn’t have grandparents, because this is proof positive in my creative kind of thinking that their stories that were handed down from generation to generation to MY generation to show that there actually were eyewitnesses to the amazingness of the beginning of the world. There were no reports whatsoever of a Big Bang. And all those complicated, intricate, (and so sorry, but) unexciting accounts of the genealogies further give us proof that there was a continuous lineage from Adam right up to BTAWB. God knew there would be nay-sayers and I like to think this is exactly why there is so much genealogy recorded in the Bible. I just love the way He works!

I love that on Day 1, He just said “Let there be light”, and POOF, there it was! The darkness was already there. And isn’t that just like God? When we are surrounded by darkness, He provides light! He goes on to say in Genesis 1:3 that after He provided the light, there was evening and there was morning; but the sun and moon weren’t created until Day 4; so how did that even work without the sun and the moon? Why did He wait until three days later to create the sun and moon and the stars? He spoke some things into existence, yet He created the sun and moon and stars. What a creative sight that must have been!!

And I wonder when He spoke vegetation into existence on Day 3, did everything just spring up all at once? It’s hard to even try to wrap my mind around that concept! I love that when He created the oceans and seas that He placed just enough sand on the shore and told the waves that they should not cross that boundary. The 37th chapter of the book of Job gives God’s own unique and beautiful account of creation; truly one of my favorites.

On Day 5, we read that God CREATED the birds and sea creatures; did you ever stop to think about how each individual bird and creature and animal are so completely different? God could have just spoken them into being as He did the light, the land, and the seas, yet He took the time to fashion each individual one into something totally unique from the other. Creativity at its finest!

On Day 6, God created man and woman. Wow. What loving artistry, all the while knowing the outcome of not only Adam and Eve, but of each of us, here and now. Even then He had a plan for each of our lives. Obviously so very much love was involved during these six days of Creation, yet the word “love” is not used in the Bible until the twenty-second chapter of Genesis when Abraham had taken Isaac on a three-day journey, the intended outcome of which was to be the sacrifice. Some have said that the word “love” was saved for this crucial moment to describe the love of a father for his only son. Love. A very powerful word. God did not use this word lightly, for true love always requires sacrifice. Loving does indeed come with a cost, but not loving always costs more.

Although the Bible does not tell us, I hope that Adam and Eve did repent for their sins that separated them from God in the garden. How anguished their hearts must have been when they realized the implications of that seemingly small error in judgement.

My prayer for you is that you personally know this God of all creation, for He loves you so!
Therefore, when I get to Heaven, at some point I’m gonna see if I can’t find Eve and chat for a while. (I like to think that God has a back porch too, the perfect place for a chat.) I’ve got so many more questions I’d like to ask!